The explosive growth of e-commerce transactions and other business across the Internet has resulted in significant growth in network traffic. This tremendous increase in transactions over data networks and/or voice networks leaves increasing numbers of users dependent on reliable network access. For emerging e-tailers, Website hosting companies, enterprises and application service providers, network downtime or poor network performance may be unacceptable or even catastrophic. It is desirable for network applications to be as consistently available in the future as telephone service is today. To support network access, network based enterprises are increasingly relying on service providers who contract to provide network access with performance expectations established pursuant to Service Level Agreements (SLAs). These SLAs are further being refined to attempt to ensure application availability. However, the increasing complexity of the networks and shortages of qualified network management personnel make the SLAs more difficult to enforce.
Network managers typically rely on some form of system management and/or network management tools to help automate performance management tasks to increase the efficiency of the network management staffs. Even with these tools, network management staffs are typically required to commit resources to integrating and customizing the tools to work in the heterogeneous network environments which may include, for example, hardware from a variety of vendors, executing a variety of operating systems and communication protocols and supporting a variety of application programs for different end user requirements.
Existing network enterprise management software applications such as TME 10 NetView (NetView) available from Tivoli Corporation and OpenView Network Node Manager (OpenView) available from Hewlett-Packard Corporation are attempts to assist network management staffs with managing increasingly complex local and wide area network environments. Such applications and other known passive and active network monitoring tools available, for example, from VitalSigns, Inc. and Ganymede Software Corporation, may generate large quantities of data tracking network performance over extended time periods. However, the mere volume of such data may further complicate the problem solving challenge for network management staffs.
One approach to determining the network related cause for detected performance degradations is path analysis. For example, the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) supports “findroute” operations and Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) supports “traceroute” operations which may identify the network path between two designated devices on a communications network. The findroute operations provide layer three Internet Protocol (IP) information identifying each router between the two designated devices. This information may be used to support problem cause isolation responsive to fault indications, such as those provided by NetView and OpenView.